Emissions reductions took place in many of the sectors including transport, energy, agriculture and waste, and at EU-15 level emission reductions were recorded with other main air pollutants - carbon monoxide (-50%) ammonia (-8%) and Non methane volatile organic compounds (NMVOC) (-45%).

The EU-25 figures are, according to the EEA, less reliable due to a lack of reporting, particularly in the early part of the period surveyed when some were yet to become members of the union.

As a result of the occasionally slapdash reporting, the EEA has recommended that improvements are made to the completeness of submissions received from Member States as well as developing more formal quality assurance procedures.

While none of the EU-15 countries reported particularly high levels of hazardous heavy metals and persistent organic pollutnants, France was consistently among the worst offenders for these pollutants, closely followed by the UK and Italy.

By and large the general trend has been a fall in concentrations of airborne pollutants and a corresponding rise in air quality, though there have been some

Data from Member States are compiled by the European Environment Agency on behalf of the European Commission as part of the community's legal reporting obligations for the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution (UNECE LRTAP Convention).